YOURSAY | ‘This one must get an entry into the record books for foot-in-mouth disease.’

Thai King: Opposition to blame for 1MDB fiasco

Anonymous_1421406986: When you think about it, BN direct candidate for Dudong Tiong Thai King is perfectly right.

The government and opposition have equal but diverse roles in the administration of a country. The opposition has been elected by the rakyat not just to prepare them to form the next government but also to keep the ruling government in check.

This is exactly what has been happening in other countries, including India, the biggest democracy in the world, where the opposition kept informing and highlighting every allegedly corrupt/destructive activity of the Congress government and to take over as the next government.

The situation here is different: each opposition party wants to kill its other component member, despite holding a meagre number of parliamentary seats.

Vijay47: For once, I am inclined to think that the Malaysiakini reporter got it all wrong.

Surely an adult cannot be that stupid as to come out with the sheer idiocy that Thai King came out with. But I suppose we have to make some exceptions when it comes to Umno-inspired politicians.

Is he the best the Sarawak BN could offer for the election? Then again, he could always claim the inevitable "I was misquoted".

I would advise Thai King not to go to Bangkok for a while - the Siamese do not take too kindly to perceived insults of associating gross stupidity with their royalty.

Speaking Sense: I make a mess and you get the blame for not stopping me from making the mess, when there was no way you could have known about it because I did everything possible to hide it from being found out.

And of course, it is not the job of those in government to make sure the government is clean and efficient.

The job of BN politicians is to try to avoid getting caught - and if you do get caught, just blame it on the opposition for not stopping them from allegedly stealing in the first place.

Speechless: If the BN government needs to be monitored by the opposition to do the right thing, then we should just have the opposition as the government. Tiong is implying that the BN government is inherently untrustworthy.

Kee Thuan Chye: I suppose the numerous opposition leaders being barred from entering Sarawak is also the fault of the opposition.

Former chief minister Abdul Taib Mahmud amassing so much wealth is also due to the failure of the opposition to monitor him. If the voters give Tiong victory, they would have to be unbelievably stupid.

StrainingGnats, SwallowCamels: "Tiong Thai King said the 1MDB fiasco came about because the opposition had shirked its duty in monitoring the government."

Tiong, if I might be given a chance to make a comparison, it is this - it is as hard to monitor 1MDB with all its secret and surreptitious dealings as it is with the secret and illegal partnerships of crooked tycoons and politicians.

In addition, monitoring is not the same as evidence. The opposition could only monitor from the outside peering at an opaque house of veiled dealings. They are not even authorised to do anything like an audit; they can only demand and refuse to be distracted.

But the government has been hiding. Don't you know that the auditor-general's report on 1MDB has been classified as official secrets?

Fear: What Tiong’s statement really means is that the BN government is doing a really bad job (he gave the example of 1MDB) and all this happened because the opposition had shirked its duty in monitoring the BN government.

So, why vote for the opposition as the BN government will continue to do a bad job and the opposition will continue to fail to do anything?

Anonymous 1890491455255851: Tiong’s excuse is beyond comprehension. The mind boggles.

I don't know who this man is but obviously it just reinforces to us that intelligence is sorely lacking in the BN government. Does he even know what he sounds like when he says something like this?

What next? Perhaps it is the public to be blamed especially those who voted for BN. They kept BN in power and the whole country has to put up with people like this, ending up with the situation we find ourselves in.

Vela: Wow! That's like saying if you murdered someone, you're not fully responsible because the police should have advised you not to commit murder before you did.

So the police are also to blame. Tiong is a genius.

Anonymous 2362021442199789: This must be the most obtuse logic ever espoused by a candidate running for the state legislature.

The opposition has done everything humanly possible to highlight and protest at what was happening in 1MDB and the way in which it was being managed and governed. They have been stymied, intimidated and obstructed each step of the way by the executive.

They have been accused of selling out the country, trying to topple the government, defame and slander the PM. However, there was something they did not do - to self-immolate themselves.

SusahKes: The opposition "had shirked its duty in monitoring the government"? Well, that's a new one, isn’t it? Even by BN standards for "originality", this one must get an entry into the record books for foot-in-mouth disease.

At least, it exonerates the opposition from those who were accusing them of, among others, "treason", "conspiring with the Jews", "jealous at Najib", and "sounding like a broken record".

Anonymous_3e68: Albert Einstein said, “Two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity; and I am not sure about the universe.”

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